Archive for 2021
December 30, 2021
GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: L.A.’s Arms Race of the Affluent.
In Beverly Hills, even the purchase of a firearm comes with certain…expectations. The city’s only gun store, Beverly Hills Guns, is a “concierge service” by appointment only, for a largely affluent clientele. And business is booming.
Since opening in July 2020, the store has seen upscale residents from Santa Monica to the Hollywood Hills increasingly in a panic following several high-profile smash-and-grab and violent home invasion robberies. The apparent siege has brought in a daily stream of anxious business owners and prominent actors, real estate moguls and film execs, says owner Russell Stuart. Most are arming themselves for the first time.
“This morning I sold six shotguns in about an hour to people that say, ‘I want a home defense shotgun,’” says Stuart, whose store is discreetly located in a Beverly Hills office building, with no sign on the doors, down the hall from a diamond dealer. “Everyone has a general sense of constant fear, which is very sad. We’re used to this being like Mayberry.”
That fear has the wealthiest of local gentry contemplating every more elaborate security measures: armored luxury cars, safe rooms and bullet-proof glass in their homes. One client asked about creating the “Tony Stark-level” security of a half-dozen automated drones to hover over his house, says Stuart, whose gun store is part of his larger security company, Force Protective Agency. “If you want the Gucci package, it’s going to cost money.”
The security business is experiencing a rebound after a couple of diminished years because of the pandemic. Some firms had their on-site security guards sent home for health and social distancing reasons. Not anymore. In Beverly Hills, the craving for additional security dates to the riot that followed an otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter protest* in May 2020, with unprecedented looting along Rodeo Drive that left broken boutique windows beneath beloved luxury brands: Chanel, Dior, Gucci, Michael Kors, MCM, Ermenegildo Zegna. Last March, a $500,000 Richard Mille watch was stolen at gunpoint from a diner at the Il Pastaio restaurant. The Dec. 1 home-invasion robbery and shooting death of philanthropist Jacqueline Avant, 81, in her Trousdale Estates home, only accelerated the arms race among the affluent.
Just a reminder that the people who want you unarmed aren’t practicing what they preach. As to why, curiously, CTRL-F “George Gascon” brings up zero returns.
* Nice variation on the DNC-MSM’s “mostly peaceful protest” leitmotif.
SAME: The CDC No Longer Considers Me ‘Fully Vaccinated.’ “The CDC doesn’t say this outright, but it’s very clear in their updated guidance on quarantining that they see anyone who hasn’t been boostered as being the same as an unvaccinated person.”
ETHICS TRAINING: Tomorrow I have to take my annual ethics training at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. At the Commission, “ethics” means you mustn’t buy or sell stock without reporting it. It’s a very limited view of the subject. Where I come from it would be considered unethical to issue a report that frightens African American mothers into believing that doctors and nurses are a bunch of racists, thereby discouraging them from seeking proper medical care early in their pregnancy. But what do I know?
By the way, the Commission has a new report on bail reform that it has been sitting on for more than a month now. I’m told it will finally come out in January.
STILL POPULAR: New Apple AirPods Pro. #CommissionEarned
A 2021 MAN OF THE YEAR: Kenosha Cop Who Arrested Jury-Stalking MSNBC Producer.
THE END OF MOVIE THEATERS — PART 22:
One single data point sums it up.
“Spider-Man: No Way Home” collected $260 million in the United States and Canada on its opening weekend. Total ticket sales for the two countries totaled $283 million, according to Comscore. That means “No Way Home” made up 92 percent of the market. “Nightmare Alley,” which was released on the same weekend, played to virtually empty auditoriums. It took in $2.7 million.”
92 percent of the market. It’s a staggering figure that shows just how dead movie theaters are.
Blockbusters had been swallowing up more and more of the theater marketplace with the entire industry increasingly built around $100 million and then $250 million and then $1 billion massive movies with less room for midsize movies. Combine that with the pandemic and you have movie theaters built around a handful of huge blockbusters and nothing else. Literally.
It was in this environment that Steven Spielberg made one of the worst decisions of his career: Say what? The ethnic irony of Spielberg’s West Side Story:
While it’s the music that many of us associate with “West Side Story,” much of the story is told through spoken language, with the Sharks in Mr. Spielberg’s version, the Puerto Ricans, speaking Spanish and their adversaries, the Jets, speaking English.
Forgoing subtitles for the Spanish dialogue was a deliberate decision. “If I subtitled the Spanish,” Mr. Spielberg told entertainment digital media platform IGN, “I’d simply be doubling down on the English and giving English the power over the Spanish … I needed to respect the language enough not to subtitle it.”
This was an artistically bold choice. But the decision also sidelines the vast majority of the film’s potential audience, since Spanish speakers represent just 13% of the American public, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
This means substantial parts of the film are inaccessible, or at the very least are hard to track, for non-Spanish speakers. While the scenes are artfully scripted and acted, and sometimes use a mix of English and Spanish dialogue — which attentive audience members may be able to follow — many non-Spanish speakers will get lost or lose interest.
Losing interest you say? With just $36.6 million in ticket sales, West Side Story is officially a box-office bomb. “In its first three weeks in cinemas, the film has captured just $36.6 million in global ticket sales. Its production budget was around $100 million, not including marketing costs.”
CNBC’s article at that last link doesn’t even mention the lack of subtitles, despite it being a decision on-par with Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories commercial suicide that helped to kill off United Artists. Assuming movies will still be shown in theaters going forward, Spielberg’s “artistically bold choice” could ensure that no director will be given final cut by a studio ever again.
JAW, JAW IS BETTER THAN WAR, WAR: U.S. and Russia Agree to Talks Amid Growing Tensions Over Ukraine. “The threat of a possible invasion of Ukraine is critical leverage for Moscow, and Russian officials say the Jan. 10 talks need to focus on their proposed ‘treaty’ that demands that NATO never offer membership to Ukraine or place its forces or weapons in former Soviet states.”
There’s also this reminder from Andrew Michta at 1945:
If the demands to negotiate have a larger aim it is to divide the alliance. Most importantly, the idea that Russia would need a written treaty guarantee to forestall Ukraine or Georgia’s accession to NATO is absurd. Putin knows that so long as he occupies Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine and Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, the countries have no chance of making it into NATO, for a vote to enlarge the alliance would mean in effect a vote to go to war with Russia. Moscow’s demand that the effective status quo be confirmed by treaty is thus nothing short of an attempt to humiliate the West.
Nobody wants to go to war over Ukraine, nor should we. But nobody should underestimate Joe’s ability to f*** things up, either.
JOEL KOTKIN: The left doesn’t own minority voters: Unless left-wing parties drop their woke dogmas, they’ll struggle in the increasingly diverse West. “The shift in most Western countries to a more racially and ethnically diverse demographic has been widely seen by left-wingers as an opportunity to cement their ascendancy. Yet after early successes with this strategy, the parties of the left have witnessed the departure of some minority voters – Hindus in Britain, Asians in Australia, and Asians and Hispanics in the United States. In some cases, minorities are opting out of the intersectional bandwagon, which includes certain cultural attitudes, imposed progressivism in schools, and an increasing tolerance of crime.”
Gentry-class posturing sells mostly with the gentry-class baizuo types.
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Matt Margolis: Why Did Biden Flip-Flop on Executive Privilege of Trump Documents? “The Biden White House now says that releasing all the Trump administration documents the J6 committee had requested ‘could compromise national security and executive privilege.'” (With the accent on “executive privilege.’)
Athena Thorne: Democrats Build Back Biased Courts With Pseudo-Retirements and Record Appointments. “With their preposterous occupancy of the White House and fragile control of the Senate, Democrats are working hard to undo the Republicans’ progress in the arena of the federal courts.”
Yours Truly: NEW BIG DOG? Arms Sale Fail Shows Chinese Strength in Cold War II. “I’ll always believe that, ultimately, communist regimes are doomed, but right now I must admit that we might be in a situation perhaps nearly as likely to lead to war — but a genuinely more dangerous war — than 1939-41.”
EVERY SUNDAY — SOMETIMES MONDAY — I HAVE A PROMO POST FOR MOSTLY INDIE WRITERS: RARE-ISH mONDAY Book Promo And Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
There’s also a vignette challenge, which in the past has launched a half dozen indie novels.
As for the timing…. well, this entire week has been weird.
SADLY APT:
AND THERE IS MY SHOCKED FACE, AGAIN: Arctic Ocean Warming Began Already In Early 20th Century, Meaning Natural Factors Strongly At Play, Not CO2.
YOU WANT TO PISS ALL OVER SOMETHING? GO MAKE YOUR OWN THING TO PISS ON: Marisa Tomei wanted to make Spider-Man’s Aunt May a lesbian.
No more woke remakes. Not.A.Single.One. It’s not innovative, it’s not creative, it’s not amazing, it’s not stunning-brave. It’s boring. It’s annoying. And it’s stupid. But mostly stupid.
HE’S A BIT OVER-OPTIMISTIC, BUT THE GENERAL FEEL IS RIGHT: America’s Christmas Present Is All the Democrats’ Dreams Dying.
HE’S A LAME USURPER: Looking around: France doubles down on nuclear energy; omicron in NYC and London; is Biden already a lame duck?
What’s worse, Kamala which was their great non-white hope, is even lamer. And they don’t know what to do.
#TEAMHEADSONPIKES ALSO POSSIBLE. DON’T START NONE, WON’T BE NONE: Air Travel Vaccine Mandate Possible Says Biden.
Now is the time for the sane –?– members of the Brandon Junta to fade quietly stage left, before the citizens really lose their cool. Even the lamb-like Europeans are rebelling. Don’t try us too high. Look, you can always go off to your spiritual homeland in China. We will be good and not stuff apples in your mouths. No matter the temptation. In the spirit of goodwill, we’ll punch air holes in the containers we send you to China in. We just think Xi should get what he bought.
LO AND BEHOLD, MY SHOCKED FACE: Defense claims entrapment in the Whitmer kidnapping plot case.
WE REMEMBER, WE CREATE, WE WARN. THINK OF US AS YOUR THREE AM PANIC ATTACKS: Más se perdío.
THE JUNTA IS AT WAR WITH THE COUNTRY: Unvaccinated Marines claim COVID mandate ‘purge’ as all religious exemption bids are denied.
3,080 requests for religious exemptions have been reviewed, 0 have been approved. In America we had freedom of religious conscience. But the Junta is not American.
MS. WALLACE? THERE’S ANTI-PSYCHOTICS FOR THAT: ‘I’m a Fauci groupie,’ MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace declares.
OH, IT’S JUST#TEAMHEADSONPIKES WHITTLING: Biden’s comments about air travel create massive instability in America.